Toxic

by Sara Shepard

  Suddenly, Emily slammed on the brakes, sending Aria flying against her seat belt. The bottle of water she and Hanna had been sharing rolled to the floor, the cap popping off and liquid pouring everywhere.

  “What the hell?” Spencer called out.

  “Look.” Emily pointed at a woman strolling down the path that paralleled the road. She had dark hair and wore denim shorts and a faded blue T-shirt. A golden retriever with a bandanna around its neck walked beside her, its tail wagging. “I bet she lives here,” Emily added.

  “So?” Hanna hissed. “That’s no reason to give us whiplash!”

  Emily pulled to the side of the road, killed the engine, and got out of the car. Spencer gave Aria a nervous look. What’s she doing? she mouthed. Aria pulled her bottom lip into her mouth and climbed out of the car.

  Emily jogged up to the woman. “Excuse me, miss?”

  The woman turned and squinted at them. She was older than Aria had first thought, her face lined and weathered, with ropy tendons sticking out on her neck. She pulled on the leash for the dog to stop. “Can I help you?”

  Emily jutted a finger at the Maxwells’ red mailbox. “Have you seen anyone coming in and out of there? A girl, maybe?”

  The woman stared at the mailbox for a long time. A gust of wind blew up the ends of her hair. The fingers of her left hand kneaded into the dog’s fur on his back. “I don’t think so.”

  “Think,” Emily insisted. “It’s really important.”

  Aria touched her friend’s arm warningly. Emily sounded kind of pushy . . . and they didn’t know this woman at all.

  A light went on in the woman’s eyes. “Yes. I saw a girl, actually. A blonde, I think.”

  “When?” Emily cried in a loud, somewhat aggressive voice.

  The woman flinched. “I—I don’t know. Isn’t she their daughter?”

  “When did you last see her?” Emily pressed.

  The woman suddenly looked trapped. Aria grabbed Emily’s arm and pulled her away. “We should go.” She smiled politely at the woman. “Sorry.”

  The woman drew her dog closer to her. Two deep parentheses formed at the corners of her mouth, and then she started down the road. “You should be,” Aria thought she heard her mumble.

  When they got back to the car, Aria saw that Spencer’s face was bright red. “Em, what’s gotten into you?” Spencer cried. “You can’t assault people!”

  “She knew something!” Emily cried. “What if she’s hiding Ali? What if she’s bringing her food? She could be an Ali Cat!”

  Emily tried to break free and run after the woman again, but Spencer grabbed her tighter. “Em, come on. You have to calm down.”

  Emily’s tense form slackened. She laid her head on Spencer’s shoulder and started to sob. “I can’t take this,” she blubbered, barely able to get the words out. “I just want to find her and end this.”

  Aria stepped forward and caressed Emily’s back, trying to understand how awful it must be to lose someone that important. Of course Emily was beside herself. Of course she wanted answers. “We know,” Aria said gently. “And we’re here for you.”

  “And we’re going to find Ali,” Spencer insisted. “We’re going to put up those cameras, and we’re going to catch her. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Emily blubbered.

  Gently, Spencer took the keys from Emily’s hand and settled her into the passenger seat. Then she moved into the driver’s seat herself. Aria thought it was a good move—Emily was way too distraught to drive. Spencer slowly pulled away from the curb, passing the woman and her dog down the road. Aria turned her head away, too embarrassed to make eye contact.

  In thirty minutes, they’d reached the Best Buy outside Rosewood. They walked into the store, which smelled like rubber and had Miley Cyrus blasting loudly over the speakers. “So we’ll buy four cameras,” Spencer was saying as they walked through the aisles. “They’ll be in four quadrants on the screen. And we’ll have a server so that we can watch even when we’re in the car, or in class—whatever. We don’t even have to find a wireless signal.”

  “That sounds good,” Aria said, nearly colliding with a turning rack of headphones in order to keep up. “And I think . . .” She trailed off and stopped short. A familiar figure stood a few feet from her, staring at the selection of computer mice. A thin girl with long blond hair and expensive-looking wedge sandals stood next to him, her arm slung around his waist. Aria’s heart froze in her chest.

  It was Noel.

  A small sound escaped from the back of Aria’s throat. Noel turned and saw her, his features tensing, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

  “H-hi,” Aria blurted. Her cheeks reddened. She stared at the girl’s thin, tanned arm around Noel’s waist. She couldn’t help it.

  Noel glanced at the blond girl, too. “Oh. Scarlett, this is Aria.”

  The girl smiled tightly, a territorial look flashing across her face. After a beat, she extended her hand. “Scarlett Lorie. Nice to meet you.”

  Aria nodded, her mind scattering in a zillion directions. She didn’t know that name or recognize this Scarlett person at all. Was she Noel’s girlfriend? For how long? Why were they shopping for computer mice together? Why did Noel look so happy?

  Spencer swept up to Aria with a cart full of boxes. “We’re all good,” she said in a perfunctory voice, then noticed Noel and Scarlett, still standing there, their arms entwined. “Oh. Hi, Noel.” She grabbed Aria’s hand and pulled her away. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  Aria turned and gave Noel a parting glance, but he didn’t wave. He just . . . stared at her, and Scarlett wrapped her arm around him tighter, leaning forward to whisper something into his ear. Aria bit down hard on the inside of her cheek as the cashier rang Spencer up and she handed over a stack of twenty-dollar bills—it was better to pay in cash, they’d decided, so no one could track them down later.

  When the transaction was finished, she peeked at Noel once more. Now the two of them were laughing flirtatiously. Maybe at her.

  Aria jerked away, facing the front of the store. Whatever. It didn’t matter. Noel could date anyone he wanted.

  Even a ditzy blond idiot who looked, disturbingly, like Ali.

  19

  SPENCER’S GOT A FAN. . . .

  “More coffee, miss?”

  Spencer jumped and hid her iPad with a napkin. A petite Asian girl wearing a pink apron that said SUE’S held a carafe of coffee.

  Spencer shook her head. “I’m okay for now, thanks.”

  She waited until the waitress drifted away before looking at the iPad again. She’d been so lost in concentration on the video surveillance they’d set up yesterday, she’d forgotten that she was watching from this little café in Philly and not in her bedroom.

  Not that the surveillance cameras had yielded any activity yet. It had been hard to conceal the cameras in the trees, first of all, so only one view really showed the inside of the house. The other three angles showed the porch, the side yard, and an angle facing the big house—they might be able to catch someone on their approach. There hadn’t been the slightest movement on any of the cameras, though. Only a few deer drifting past, some leaves blowing. Her friends hadn’t seen anything during their shifts, either.

  We’ve only been at this one day, she told herself, nervously rearranging the sugar and Sweet’N Low packets in the small ceramic holder in the middle of the table so they all faced the same direction, something she often did to calm herself down. Maybe Ali was still in New York.

  “What’s all this?”

  Spencer jumped again. Greg stood above her, smiling bashfully.

  “Oh!” Spencer hid the iPad screen with her hand. “Just some dumb thing on Vine. So how are you?” she said, trying to act casual.

  “Fine.” Greg pulled out a chair. “You been here long?”

  “Uh, traffic was light.” Spencer peeked at the iPad screen. Nothing. She quickly logged out of the server and shoved the device in her tote bag. “I love this place, by the
way.”

  Greg smiled. “I’m glad. It’s the only place I know in Philly, actually. I don’t get to the city much.”

  He’d texted last night wanting to see her, and when Spencer had said yes, he’d mentioned Sue’s and said he had time at 10:00 AM. Sue’s had quaint, mismatched tables, miniature tea sets on high shelves along the walls, and stacks and stacks of books and board games that overtook a lot of the floor space. There was something so pleasantly haphazard about the café, like you were drinking coffee in a professor’s living room.

  “Well, thanks for coming all the way to Philly,” Spencer said after the same waitress poured Greg a cup of coffee.

  Greg smiled. “Delaware is about as far from Philly as Rosewood. And anyway, thank you. I wasn’t really sure you’d want to after, you know, New York.”

  A too-hot sip of coffee slid down Spencer’s throat. She’d thought Greg wouldn’t want to see her. After Ali’s train had whooshed into that dark, obscuring tunnel, Greg had asked what Spencer had been trying to tell him. But by that point, Spencer knew she’d sound insane if she said anything, so she’d kept quiet. But Ali’s face hadn’t left her thoughts. She’d been distant the rest of the night, heading back to Rosewood early.

  Now Greg stared at her intently, perhaps waiting. Spencer looked down. “I guess I owe you an explanation, huh?”

  “Only if you want to.”

  She gazed at the books on the shelves. Did she? She wasn’t sure.

  When she tried to get more words out, they wouldn’t come. Greg’s shoulders heaved up and down. He took a long sip of coffee. “You probably have a lot of people nosing around your life right now, wanting to know more about you. But what I saw the other night in the subway station was . . . panic. I want to help. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

  “I know. And that’s sweet.” She tried to smile. There were worse things in life than having a gorgeous guy care about her well-being.

  “You seem really scared to me. I’ve lived that, Spencer. I know how it feels and what it looks like. So can you tell me what happened?”

  Spencer stuck a spoon in her coffee and slowly stirred. She thought again how Greg had been so willing to listen. He seemed completely guileless. She realized that even though she barely knew him, she trusted him.

  She shifted forward a little. “Okay. I don’t think Alison’s dead.”

  Greg’s eyes widened. “Alison DiLaurentis.” It came out like a statement, not a question. “You’re sure?”

  Spencer swallowed hard, glancing around to make sure no one was listening. That was the beauty about this place, though—no one was here. “Yes,” she whispered. “We’re pretty sure.”

  She told Greg that Ali had haunted her, Hanna, and even Aria, in a way, and then how she almost drowned Emily. “I had an eerie sense I’d see her in New York somewhere,” she explained. “And then I did—on the subway. I never thought it would be somewhere so public. I started yelling like that because I wanted someone else to see her, too—so we could prove it to the cops. But it was so loud . . . and everyone in New York thinks everyone else is crazy, and no one was paying attention to me. And then the train rolled away. She was gone.”

  Greg laced his fingers together. “So she was just . . . riding the subway? And you randomly saw her?”

  Spencer shook her head. She’d been pondering that a lot. “I think she got on at Rockefeller Center, like us. She wanted me to see her—getting on at another station and trying to time it doesn’t really make sense. Maybe she was lurking around the Time-Life Building, waiting for us to be done. And then, when we went to the subway, she hid on the uptown platform until she was positive I was looking.”

  “But why didn’t she attack you in the subway station? Why merely scare you from across the platform? From what I’ve heard, Alison seems more ruthless than that.”

  “Because she doesn’t want to draw attention to herself. The cops think she’s dead—she doesn’t want anyone else to know it’s her. I guess she didn’t plan on me freaking and trying to point her out.” Spencer pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Ali’s been doing this to all of us—appearing randomly, letting us know she’s still around. Well, except to Emily—Ali actually hurt her. And she killed Emily’s girlfriend.”

  Greg’s jaw dropped. “She did?”

  “I mean, we don’t know for sure,” Spencer backtracked. “Jordan was in prison. But it’s way too much of a coincidence.” She lowered her eyes, realizing that last part sounded insane. Maybe she shouldn’t have mentioned it.

  Greg fiddled with a little stirring spoon. “Why don’t you tell the cops?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “The cops think she’s dead. And I’m the only one who saw her in New York.”

  “Well, maybe there are cameras in the subway. Or the station.”

  Spencer thought about this. “There could be. But you’d need police permission to get those. And like I said, the police don’t believe Ali’s alive.” It was the same reason they couldn’t go to Jordan’s prison themselves and ask for surveillance records. Besides, Ali was too smart to let anything get on camera. Only, did that mean she was too smart to let herself be seen on the cameras they’d set up around the pool house, too?

  “The cops are assholes.” Greg looked angry.

  “Yeah.” Spencer pretended to pick lint off her T-shirt.

  “Well, I believe you.”

  Spencer looked up as Greg took her hand. A lump formed in her throat. It felt so good to hear someone say those words. “Thanks,” she said softly. “It’s nice to hear that.”

  Greg shook his head. “It’s a horrible thing to feel like you have no one to turn to and no one who will listen. But I will always listen. You can always talk to me. What’s your plan?”

  “We have no plans,” Spencer said automatically. There was no way she was telling him about the pool house or the surveillance cameras. But his voice was so tender that tears came to her eyes. “Thank you, though. For . . . being here.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  They stared at each other meaningfully. Then Greg moved into the seat next to Spencer and touched his lips lightly to hers. The coffee smells and faint French music fell away, and all Spencer felt was his soft mouth. Her head throbbed with pleasure. She pulled Greg closer, his firm, strong chest pressed against hers. She could feel his biceps through his shirt, his strong back muscles, too. Even his body felt safe. He really would protect her. And maybe, unlike the other boys she’d known, he wouldn’t leave when things got scary.

  They pulled away, grinning at each other. Spencer sought for something cute and witty to say, but then she blurted, “Will you go to a benefit in Rosewood with me?”

  Greg looked amused. “I’d be honored. When is it?”

  “Tomorrow.” Spencer grimaced guiltily. “I’m sorry I’m inviting you so late. But I would love it if you could make it. It’s for troubled and disadvantaged youth around Rosewood. Apparently, I’m their honored guest—maybe because I’m so troubled.” She winced.

  “Ooh,” Greg said. “Well, in my book, you’re always the honored guest.”

  Spencer was about to playfully punch him, but her buzzing phone threw her off. She glanced down into her open bag. NEW EMAIL FROM DOMINICKPHILLY.

  She groaned. What could he want? She knew she should ignore it, but she was still thinking very much about Dominick’s presence in New York. Especially how he’d sauntered out of the room saying, I hope you’re happy, little liar.

  “Excuse me,” she said to Greg, reaching for it. Slowly, she pressed the button to bring up the message. Her face fell.

  “What is it?” Greg asked.

  Spencer swallowed hard. “A new note from Dominick.”

  “That guy who heckled you?”

  She nodded, then turned her phone to show him. Greg’s brow furrowed as he inspected the screen. “You can run to Philly,” he read aloud, “but you can’t hide from the fact that you’re a fraud.” He set his jaw. “How does he know yo
u’re in Philly?”

  She ran her hands down the length of her face. “I don’t know,” she said shakily. She stared out the window, half expecting to see him on a park bench across the street, glaring. But the park’s only visitors were some pigeons. “Maybe he’s following me,” she said softly.

  “But . . . why?”

  Suddenly, Spencer had a horrible thought. She turned to Greg. “Have you heard of the Ali Cats?”

  Greg frowned. “That Alison fan club?”

  “Yeah. I haven’t wanted to think they’re dangerous, but who knows? Maybe Dominick is one of them.” Spencer had discounted Emily’s theory until she’d reread the Ali Cat post. The person who’d said they hated all enemies of Ali did seem pretty vehement. There were a lot of crazy people out there in the world—and Dominick seemed right up there.

  “So he’s out to get you?” Greg looked skeptical.

  “I don’t know.” Spencer felt like she might cry. She blinked again and again, trying to wipe away the image of Dominick’s scowling face.

  Greg curled her hand in his. “I do know, Spencer. I get it, I promise.” He slung his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “I won’t let anyone hurt you, Spencer,” he said in a warm, soft voice.

  Spencer sank her face into his chest, holding on to him tightly, wishing she would never have to let go.

  20

  ROCK BOTTOM

  Emily’s sleep was interrupted by knocking from somewhere muffled and far away. She opened one eye, then the other, and then looked around. Clothes on hangers loomed over her head. A dirty sneaker lay on its side next to her nose. She’d fallen asleep in her closet. Again.

  She uncurled from a tight ball and kicked open the door. Sun streamed through the window onto her neatly made bed. Then she heard the knocking again. Someone was at her door. “Emily?” came her mom’s voice. “Something came for you.”

  She glanced around her room, noticing the heap of blankets in the closet, Jordan’s picture on her bed, and the surveillance video screens already up on her laptop—it wasn’t her turn to monitor yet, but somehow she felt safer with them on all the time, and so she’d left the feed up all night. She tucked Jordan under the mattress and closed her laptop lid, then padded across the room and opened it a crack.